Tech Leaders Rally Behind Jensen Huang

Many of Silicon Valley’s executives and investors are rallying behind Jensen Huang, who resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive on Thursday after revelations that he had affairs with an employee and with a woman whom U.S. officials believed to be a spy for China.

In social media posts and letters to Nvidia’s board of directors, Mr. Huang’s billionaire peers described him as a singular leader who could not be replaced at Nvidia. Mr. Huang’s exit, they argued, would set the United States back in the artificial intelligence race. And they blamed Nvidia’s board for bowing to pressure.

“Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia, but many of those deals were a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive and the richest person in the world, said in a social media post on Saturday. “Without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost.”

The support put a spotlight on Nvidia’s role as the linchpin of the A.I. boom and on Mr. Huang’s leadership as the company grew into one of the most valuable in the world. Nvidia, which started making computer chips for video games, now controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the advanced chips used in the big A.I. projects that are driving the U.S. economy. Along the way, Mr. Huang became Silicon Valley’s consummate dealmaker, turning Nvidia into a central banker for start-ups that needed chips and funding.

“We believe the board should avoid a rush to replace Jensen that undermines and thwarts the best interests of shareholders,” Brad Gerstner, the chief executive of Altimeter Capital Management, and Gavin Baker, the chief investment officer of Atreides Management, wrote in a letter sent on Friday. The investors, whose firms are Nvidia shareholders, asked the company’s board to consider “all options on the table, including the potential return of Jensen Huang.”

An open letter to Nvidia’s board, titled “Stand With Jensen,” asked the board to reinstall Mr. Huang as chief executive, to conduct an independent investigation and to explain its actions. As of Saturday morning, the letter had nearly 100,000 signatures, including by current and former employees of Nvidia, business partners like Mr. Musk, and start-up leaders and shareholders including Garry Tan, the chief executive of the venture capital firm Y Combinator.